Theater Review: 10/16/2008 A View From The Bridge, Guthrie Theater

The Guthrie Theater outdid themselves with their production of Arthur Miller's A View From The Bridge. 

The elements that struck me as outstanding in the Guthrie production are the acting, the set design, and the story. All three of these elements meshed well together. 

A description of the play with story synopsis can be found at wikipedia. It's one of the great American plays.

The set beautifully captures the atmosphere of a Brooklyn in a time when ships were unloaded on the backs of men and not by machines. It is on these docks where the men distinguish themselves as men through their work and by their backs. The set shows a gritty and rough brick and concrete Italian neighborhood. The type of place where disagreements are settled with fists.

In the backdrop of the set is a likeness of the Brooklyn Bridge. It looks like a rough artist's charcoal sketch. I thought it kept the focus of my attention to the main set and the play. Had a more detailed backdrop of the Brooklyn Bridge been used, I could easily see myself losing focus of the play admiring the details of the bridge. 

The acting was probably the best I've seen at the Guthrie. Guthrie regular Nathanial Fuller, as the narrator Alfieri was outstanding, I'm surprised that he is an understudy for the role. John Carroll Lynch as Eddie Carbone gave the strongest performance in my opinion though. His performance was as good as I can remember seeing any artist's that I can remember. 

I was dismayed to see sparse attendance at the show. I strongly recommend the Guthrie's A View From The Bridge. It is scheduled to run through November 8, 2008.

PSA: Upcoming Shows At In The Heart Of The Beast Puppet and Mask Theater

In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theater has a number of upcoming shows. They are located on 1500 East Lake Street in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

If you're unfamiliar with their shows, In the Heart of the Beast produces a few main stage productions each year. They also provide a theater for visiting artists.

They also put on a weekly Saturday morning puppet show for children. If you live nearby and have children who like puppets this is a constructive alternative to having the kids watch cartoons on Saturday mornings.

On October 22-25, Paul Zaloom, AKA Beakman, will be in town to put on 3 shows.

On November 14 and 15, Heather Hensen, daughter of Jim Henson, will be in town to put on a few shows.

On December 13-21, In the Heart of the Beast will show La Natividad. La Natividad is a uniquely mobile experience.

I strongly encourage anyone who is interested in seeing one of their shows to go check them out. 

Finally, if you would like to support In the Heart of the Beast with a financial gift, they could certainly use it. You can see more details about giving here.

Full Disclosure: My wife is an employee of In the Heart of the Beast.

My Wife's Theater in the Economist

The Economist has an amusing series of puppet themed political cartoons for the RNC. They mention the theater that my wife works at: In The Heart of The Beast Puppet and Mask Theater. 

It's pretty cool to see them get recognized in such a high profile publication. 

 

BTW, if you have money just laying around and you're not sure what to do with it, ---And hey, who doesn't?-- please consider giving a tax deductable gift to In The Heart Of The Beast.

Theater Review: The Government Inspector: Guthrie Theater 8/7/08

"Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life son." That may be, but watching fat, drunk, and stupid on the stage is one hell of a way to spend an evening.

Nikolai Golgol's The Government Inspector is a farce about the officials in a corrupt czarist Russia town who mistake the identity of a visitor for a government inspector.
The town's officials are corrupt, incompetent and dumb--not like the current leadership of the US--oh zing!

The town's officials learn that a government inspector is coming to town incognito. They scramble to whitewash their corruption and incompetence. In true Three's Company Fashion--and I mean that in a good way--the town's officials mistake the identity of the inspector for Hlestakov.

Hlestakov's a broke young braggart who travels from town to town on a drinking and gambling and whoring bender staying a half a step ahead of the debts that he accrues at each stop.
When we find Hlestakov, he is broke, dispaired, and exhausted his credit at an inn. A very funny scene unfolds when Hlestakov believes the procession of constables are surrounding the inn are there to encarcerate him while the mayer is trying to find a way to bribe Hlestakov. It all unfolds from there. More can be read about the story here.

The Government Inspector may contend for my favorite show of the 2007 season. It definitely made me laugh the most.

I thought that the costumes and the set brilliantly set a cartoonish tone for the play. The movement, music, and the dialogue contributed to a light, lively, and humorous experience.
To get an idea of the tone, there is a gallery and a video of the production on the Guthrie Theater's web site here.

I think the thing that impressed me the most is how the actors performed--until you see jokes delivered poorly, it is tough to appreciate good comedic delivery. Comedy is often the most challenging form of acting. Comparatively speaking, to make an audience sad is like shooting a fish in a barrel compared to the nebulous and elusive emotion of laughter. It is easy to make an idiot laugh, it is difficult to make a room full of people laugh. The production of The Government Inspector made an entire theater full of people laugh repeatedly.

The Government Inspector plays through August 24, 2008. I highly recommend seeing it.

Theater Review: A Midsummer Night's Dream, Guthrie Theater, Minneapolis, MN, 5/15/2008

I'll admit that I got off on the wrong foot with Shakespeare in my younger years. I had heard of his work when I was very young, maybe three or four. Mostly, just picking out the word Shakespeare from some older kids' conversations about school. I used to listen to them intently as they talked about school. I couldn't wait for my turn to take these classes. I would wait and make due with my Montessori.
This Shakespeare business sounded like a fantastic concept, at least the shaking a spear part. I wondered if there might be a class that involved shaking a sword. I thought to myself, that would be a better fit for me, but spear shaking sounds good too.
I couldn't wait until I'd grow old enough to learn about this spear shaking in school. Well, life's full of disappointments and that was one of the early ones.
Since then I have grown to enjoy a good production of a Shakespeare play. Last night's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, here for no flash, at the Guthrie Theater is no exception.
Midsummer is a fun mischievous and whimsical play. It's a fantastic evening of winding love stories and the intertwining of mythical wood creatures and mankind.
This was probably one of the most literally colorful performances I've ever seen. I say this having been raised with a liberal helping of Andrew Lloyd Weber's productions, having seen the Grateful Dead, Phish, and a slew of other performances in the Day Glo period of the early 90s and that 60s revival period of the mid 90s. Have I qualified that statement enough?
There's some color to this production of A Midsummer Night's Dream.
The color lives in the forest though, in the scenery and in the costumes of the fairy characters. The fairy characters movements were energetic and playful, beaming full of life.
To juxtapose the brilliance of the woods and the wood characters, the set and costuming for the scenes in Athens are subdued and a drab. This decision makes a wonderful counterpoint to the life and energy of the forest and the forest characters.
Like in The Scarlet Letter, the forest in A Midsummer Night's Dream is a place of refuge from the structure and restrictions of human society. It is a savage place ruled more by emotion, physicality, and sensuality than by reason, law, and sensual denial. The Guthrie production made distinct the separation between these worlds.
I have to mention that this is a reprisal of a production that was originally performed over a decade prior. There was a nostalgic feel to the play that reminded me of the 90s. I think it was the music that tipped this off to me, there was something about it that made me think about Ace of Base and other the mid 90s techno pop. I'm not saying that it was necessarily a bad thing the play kept a few artifacts from that era.
Per usual the acting, costumes, set, technical aspects of the play were superb.
I highly recommend this production of A Midsummer Night's Dream with the following reservations: people who are sensitive to sensual content may not find the play appropriate and those who favor a more traditionalist interpretation of Shakespeare, they are probably best served adding some old BBC productions of Shakespeare's stuff.

Theater review: Third

My wife and I have season tickets at the Guthrie Theater. I love having them, we get the same seats for each show. I love the seats they are perfect for getting to the bars at the intermission and after the show. Pro Tip: after your show, go to the bar and have a glass of wine or coffee, you'll avoid the traffic congestion in the parking lots.
Despite my initial reservations for going I have to say that all of the shows exceeded my expectations.
The latest show we saw is Third. It's a humorous play about a liberal English professor, Laurie Jameson, who is troubled by a student who fits her ideal of all things Republican. Woodson Bull the Third, hence the name, fits her image of a young George W. Bush/Donald Rumsfeld type: white, straight, athletic, and cheerful. He also is a good student. Too good for her to believe, so she accuses him of plagiarism.
The dialogue is fantastically funny. There were some great laughs for most of the play. They did a good job keeping the funny coming. Word of warning, there are a few bombs dropped in the play, if you're offended by profanity, well I would advise against your seeing the play. Also, you should really question why profanity offends you, seriously. Not something to bring the young kids to. Also, if you consider taking small children to a stage theater for anything but a kids show, you should also rethink what you are doing.
As a white, straight, athletically inclined, happy male from a conservative house who happened to get an English degree I could relate to the play. Laurie Jameson's interpretations of King Lear reminded me of my Shakespeare class under Miriam Gilbert--the Shakespeare not the interpretation. I would love to hear her reaction to Third, I think she'd laugh like crazy through it.
The acting was excellent per usual. I enjoyed the set. It was a bare stage, for each scene the set furniture seemingly would glide onto the stage without a visible means of locomotion. The set walls had images projected on them. Between scenes, there was an enjoyable set of remakes of songs from the 60s and 70s. My favorite was a string quartet playing Jimi Hendrix's Purple Haze.
Overall, I thought the play was thoroughly enjoyable. My wife thought the ending was a little too clean for her taste